CNET Editors' Rating

The Bottom LineWhile the Gateway might appeal to users who value storage over speed, you can find more features in PCs that cost just a little less, and more performance for just a little more. That leaves this Gateway with little to recommend it.

4.8 Overall

Design6.0

Features4.0

Performance4.0

Service and support7.0

Review Sections

The DX4200-09 is another one of Gateway's midrange PCs built for light to moderate users in mind. Spending $510 on this model gives you a 1.8GHz quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, an integrated graphics chip, and a 640GB hard drive. If you can stretch your budget a bit and put an extra $50 forward, HP offers the Pavilion a6700y desktop that matches components but outperforms the Gateway across the board. If you care less about performance and want more features in your desktop, Acer's $470 Aspire X1700 outclasses this Gateway on that front. We'd only recommend this system to the handful of you who might value hard-drive size above all else.

The chassis of the Gateway DX4200-09 recalls the DX4200-UB001A that we reviewed last year. The front faceplate looks exactly the same, with a media manager, dual-layer DVD burner, and an open bay below to add an extra drive. There's a FireWire port as well as a couple of personal audio jacks at the bottom.

The rear gives you more of the same ports that you get up front, like a few extra USB inputs, another FireWire port, a collection of audio jacks, and an HDMI port to connect the computer to an HDMI-equipped monitor or television. Although it's easy to glaze over the included components, Gateway does give you ample room to make internal upgrades. There's room for two extra memory chips, a PCI slot (in addition to another occupied by the 56k modem), a smaller 1x PCI Express slot, and a 16x PCI Express slot for a graphics card. You can also drop two more hard drives into the exposed bay, in addition to adding another forward-facing optical drive.

Gateway DX4200-09

HP Pavilion a6700y

Price

$510

$ 560

CPU

1.8GHz AMD Phenom 9100e Quad-Core

1.8GHz AMD Phenom 9150e Quad-Core

Memory

4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM

4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Graphics

256MB (shared) ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics chip

128MB (shared) Nvidia GeForce 6150SE integrated graphics chip

Hard Drives

640GB, 7,200rpm

500GB 7,200rpm

Optical Drive

dual-layer DVD burner

dual-layer DVD burner

Networking

10/100Mbps Ethernet LAN

Gigabit Ethernet; 802.11b/g Wi-Fi

Operating System

Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit)

Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit)

The $560 HP Pavilion a6700y offers almost a component-for-component match to our Gateway, save a few subtle differences that give HP the ammunition to pull ahead. For example, both systems share the same CPU clock speed and built-in RAM, but the Gateway has a larger hard drive and more video memory than the HP. We suspect that portioning off more integrated video memory actually hurts the Gateway on our application tests. HP also gets you gigabit Ethernet and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi. We don't require either in low-end midtower PCs like these, and in fact we think HP could have spent its features budget more wisely in that system. But by outpacing the Gateway and giving you Wi-Fi, the HP looks a lot more appealing.

Our performance benchmarks solidify our buying recommendation: the Gateway trails the rest of the competition in every single test, most notably in the Cinebench and multitasking results, where HP enjoys the major advantage by comparison. In terms of features and performance, the HP a6700y takes the prize, but storage stackers and users itching to expand will be satisfied with the Gateway.

Justin Yu covers headphones and peripherals for CNET. When he's not wading through Web gulch or challenging colleagues to typing tests, you can find him making fun of technology with Jeff Bakalar every afternoon on The 404 show.
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